What’s up with Uber and Lyft Rate Changes?

If you didn’t know, Uber and Lyft both changed their rates in December, and continue to do so across the country. And as of March 11, Uber finally rolled out rate changes in Los Angeles, one of their biggest markets. What I’m going to do is go over five aspects of that change.

This video’s called Why I’m Pissed That Uber and Lyft Changed Their Rates, and stick around because at the end of the video, I’ll share with you the number one reason why I’m pissed.

Both Lyft & Uber are changing rates

First is the announcements that they made to us, the drivers. It was first I heard about it from Uber on November 29th, and I got this email. Basically they told us that the rate for the miles, how much we get paid per mile, was going to come down a little bit, but oh my gosh, the amount of money we’re going to make per minute is going to go up. Overall, the rates wouldn’t really affect our revenue. We’ll get to that later.

Then, I though, “Wow, that’s something that Uber would do but not Lyft.” But then a few weeks later, I got this little notification in my app from Lyft, saying basically they’re doing the same thing. It just irritated pretty much everybody that I know who’s a driver, getting these announcements.

Who benefits from these rate changes?

Let’s look at who this helps and who this hurts. If you’re an aggressive driver and you’re trying to maximize your revenue, this hurts you because the goal of the game has been to get as many miles in as you can because those miles were paying us the most, not the minutes. You’d want to find the opportunities where you could drive at 70 miles per hour on the freeway, and make those big payouts. Now, those are going to pay you less.

Now, if you’re not a great driver and you’re not looking to maximize your revenue, you’re sitting in traffic, you don’t really care. If that’s the case, this change will benefit you because you sitting in traffic, you’re going to get a little bit more per minute and you’ll make a little bit more.

I don’t like the change if you can’t tell. This is why I’m pissed because I really work hard to maximize my driving time on the weekends to get those long trips so that my per hour earnings is as high as possible.

We don’t know of any drivers who are happy with this change

I did some looking on the internet, and no driver is happy with this change. It’s just BS that we’re being told by Uber and Lyft that our rates won’t change, that we’re going to make the same amount of money, right? We’ll make a little bit less on the long rides, a little bit more on the short rides, but it’s all going to kind of even out, that’s what they’ve been telling us. I did a little bit of looking on the internet and man, there is some serious backlash. It’s well-deserved.

The timing is bad: They did a few good things, and now this

Number four is, bad timing. Uber and Lyft, this is bad timing. I mean, what were you thinking? You came out with Uber Pro and Lyft came out with their 15 enhancements, and these were all good things, but the majority of drivers in the country haven’t seen them yet, I haven’t seen much of them in San Francisco, certainly not the ones that would earn me any extra revenue or help me with my driving.

And then you hit us with this. Whatever good will you generated with those enhancements, dashed, gone. We trust you less, and we are now more cynical and doubtful, and certainly there are many people now who are going to think, “I don’t even know if I want to drive anymore.” Because that’s what’s gone through my head because the direction is like this, it’s like death by 1,000 cuts.

We are making less money!

Number five, the number one reason that I am pissed is I’m making less money. I had to dive into the numbers, and I took a week in which I did 165 drives for Lyft, and I ran the numbers with the old rates and with the new rates. You know what I found out? I would have made $34 less, which is about 2% of my driving revenue, this is not counting bonuses, not counting cancels, not counting tips, anything like that, but just purely on the time and distance. That’s 2%. So, if I make $100,000 in a year, I just lost $2,000 based on what I saw in that one week.

Another driver did his research as well, and he found out in Boston that he lost $12 in a week. You may say, “Well, what’s the big deal? $34, $12.” Well, over a year or over a career, that’s a lot of money. $2,000, that’s a good vacation I’m missing out on because of this change.

That’s the number one reason. I work hard, you all have your reasons for working, and this just makes it harder for us, the drivers, because we’re making less money.

In summary, the way you got to look at this is, we are pawns on a chessboard, and as long as you understand that, as long as you don’t have these visions that you and Uber and Lyft are partners and that they have your wellbeing in mind, that you are a pawn and they’re going to manipulate you as much as they can to make as much money as they can, if you understand that’s the game that they’re playing and you’re okay with that, then it’s okay. But if you’re under the misconception that we’re all working together here and they care about us as drivers, I would say, you’re going to get hurt. All right, you’re going to be upset and driving won’t be as much of a joy.

Everybody, I want to say thanks for watching. It’s great to have you here. I hope you liked the video. If you did, go ahead and give it a like. By all means, if you haven’t subscribed to this channel, please go ahead and do so. We offer you lots of videos on the topic of being a driver, whether you drive people around or you drive food around or you drive whatever it may be.

Everybody, this is Jay Cradeur with The Rideshare Guy, saying go out and have a great day. Be safe out there.